Why Your Website Is Your Best Marketing Weapon

We’ve got so many marketing tools at our disposal nowadays, what with all of the social media platforms available, e-mail marketing, blogs, video marketing, print marketing – the list is endless. It’s easy to forget about your website, and get into the habit of churning out new content on a daily basis.

But what about the idea of your website being your biggest and best weapon in your marketing toolbox? You may scoff, but every other piece of marketing you do should link back to your website, making it the linchpin of your marketing pin. When you tweet or post on Facebook, you should be thinking about linking back to your website regularly.

You could spend a lot of time crafting captivating social media posts, but if your web design or web content (web copywriting) isn’t up to scratch, then it’s unlikely that your followers will buy from you and will go and look at a competitor’s site instead. Potential customers look at your website and make a buying decision based on it. Your website is your shop window, and should be kept pristine at all times.

Over 2 billion people are expected to buy goods and services online by 2019. Make sure you don’t miss out because of a poor website.

Research by the Missouri Institute of Science and Technology found that it takes a new website visitor just two tenths of a second to form an opinion about the website. They even recorded the length of time people spend looking at different sections of the website. It’s important to have a clear navigation menu, a strong logo and a legible homepage (as a web designer it’s part of my job to help you with this).

Your website is the source of the most important business statistics you’ll need (conversion rates, bounce rates, sales), so make sure you have Google Analytics linked to your site. Pay attention to this information, not followers and likes. You’ll be able to understand your customers better and market to them better as a result. What type of people does your site attract, and convert into a customer? Your website makes it possible for you to have access to this information and use it to grow your business.

Despite the popularity of tweets and Instagram post, you can’t get across the full extent of your products and services using social media posts. That’s why your web pages are crucial. ALL of your content marketing it created on your website. It’s your sales hub, and you can create landing pages to really show the benefits of what you’re offering to your potential customers.

It’s also the best place to capture contact information (usually in the form of a free opt-in in exchange for an email address) which you can use to build your email list (which gets your offers directly in front of people who are interested). You can include a testimonials page with glowing reviews from previous clients, or spread them over the pages of your site to offer social proof of your skills and talents. Make sure your blog posts include customised calls-to-action to remind your potential customers to find out more or buy.

It doesn’t look like people will stop searching for what they’re looking for on Google (or other search engines) in the near future. The only thing that matters, in terms of a search results, is your website. Not how big your Instagram following is or the thousands of followers you have on Twitter. The closer you are to the top of the first page of Google, the more likely it is that people will look at your page.

The first organic result on the first page of Google (not a Google ad) enjoys 33% of the traffic related to that search. This is why SEO and keyword ranking is so important.

If you own a responsive, well-designed site that has good SEO, it makes it much easier to get more business (make sure your site is mobile responsive to avoid missing out on mobile based sales and being penalised by Google in the rankings).